While students at Rutgers University are focused on upcoming final exams and commencement, faculty union members are preparing for the possibility of a strike, which would be the first in the university's history.þþMore than a year of negotiations on a new contract have so far failed to produce an agreement on the union’s proposals for gender and campus pay equity and higher salaries for teaching assistants, among other demands.þþAs a result, members of Rutgers AAUP-AFT, the university’s largest faculty union, have been signing up for picket duty, and union leaders have scheduled an emergency town hall for Thursday so the 4,800 full-time faculty and graduate worker members can learn more about the strike plans.þþThe preparations come after an overwhelming majority of union members voted last month to let union leaders call for a strike as part of contract negotiations.þþ“We continue to prepare for a strike — we’re not bluffing,” union vice president David Hughes said after another round of failed bargaining sessions last week. Two more bargaining sessions are planned for April.þþUnion members have filled out strike pledge forms, indicating the times they're available to picket. þþHughes said that after the announcement last Tuesday of the state’s higher education plan, which included a students' “Bill of Rights” that aligns with the union’s demands, the bargaining unit expected the university’s negotiations team to reach a consensus with them on some of those demands. But an agreement was not reached, he said.þþ“The higher education plan announced by the Secretary of Higher Education Zakiya Smith Ellis on Tuesday included diversifying faculty, pay equity and supporting faculty in order to support students. None of that was in management’s posture at the bargaining table,” Hughes said. “We talked very explicitly about the union’s proposal to diversify the faculty so that it starts to look more like the people of New Jersey, but the administration is flat-out refusing to contribute resources for that.”þþThere have been 35 negotiating sessions since March, university spokeswoman Dory Devlin said on Monday. The university ÿexpects to continue to meet and negotiate in good faith,ÿ she said.þþThe Rutgers AAUP-AFT union will decide “soon” on whether it will hold a strike, Hughes said.þþ“If we do strike, it will be because we consider the short-term disruption of classes to be worth the long-term investment in quality higher education we’re bargaining for,” he said. “We’re preparing and we’re taking the matter extremely seriously, because no one is eager to strike but we do it for the sake of higher education and for the sake of our students.”þþPresident Robert Barchi has already committed $21.7 million in presidential strategic funds through 2021 to promote diversity among faculty members, including recruitment, retention and mentorship, Devlin said. She added that 79 new diverse faculty members have been recruited since 2016 across the university through those funds. þþÿIt’s important to note that that while the university can underwrite recruitment and retention efforts, as it has done, the faculty make the ultimate hiring decisions within their departments and schools,ÿ Devlin said. ÿWe are working with departments, deans and chairs to ensure that candidate pools include diverse candidates and that our commitment to diversity is a priority.ÿ þþHughes said union members want Rutgers to go a step further by committing more resources and money to a proposal they call “EOF plus six,” which would be targeted fellowships for low-income first-generation students who are part of the Education Opportunity Fund program to study to become researchers and professors. The Rutgers-Newark campus will begin a similar program in the fall, funded by an award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.þþThe union also demands a pay increase for part-time lecturers and teaching assistants. Part-time lecturers are currently paid $5,200 per course and teaching assistants are paid $26,000 per year.þþ“We’re really trying to make it possible for everybody who teaches at Rutgers to earn a living wage and live with enough security to provide the best possible education to our students,” Hughes said.þþContracts for 24 labor unions at Rutgers expired in July. Six labor unions have either reached an agreement with the university or are in the process of ratification, Devlin said. The agreements include 3 percent raises in each of the next three years and a 2.5 percent increase in the final year, she said.
Source: northjersey.com
